re: Camaro owner catches mechanics at dealership abusing his car(Posted by BTHog on 10/10/12 at 12:12 am to Slinger16)

Nice thing about habong your own shop is being able to simply refuse to do any half arse repairs.

Using your example. There is noway id replace a timing belt driven water pump without replacing the timing belt as well and of course new gaskets and such. And the reverse is also true. It would be plain stupid to change timing belt and not reace the water pump.

Of course like i said mst of our business is long term customers. They park their car in our lot with a note to just fix it. They trust us and weve earned that trust.

Honestly if i ever did have a situation where the customer bitched about me replacing the water pump while cha.ging the timing belt, assuming we hadnt discussed it beforehand which would be unusual, id just give them the pump and be done with it.

re: Camaro owner catches mechanics at dealership abusing his car(Posted by BTHog on 10/10/12 at 12:21 am to redstick13)

That is stilk true but all modern cars have their fuel air and spark controlled by computer. Without proper diagnostic equipment your fricked unless you just want to replace parta.

Let me give you a quick example.

Customer came in last week had his chevy silverado towed in. Crank no start.

He replaced a fuel pump hismelf. No small feat. Did nothing to help him. Full tune up. No help. Crankshaft sensor no help.

Finally after three weeks and thousands of dollara in parts and hours of working on it himself he brings it to me.

I plug my $5k scanner into it look at the datastream and notice right away that the ecu thinks the engine is 285 degrees. Well turns out the ecu wont allow spark to the coils if the engine is over heating so i order a $20 engine coolant temp sensor put it in clear the codes and start the truck.. charged the customer $30 for the part $40 labor and hes a customer for lfe and now understands that the rules are different for todays cars.

re: Camaro owner catches mechanics at dealership abusing his car(Posted by Slinger16 on 10/10/12 at 12:24 am to BTHog)

quote:I plug my $5k scanner into it look at the datastream and notice right away that the ecu thinks the engine is 285 degrees. Well turns out the ecu wont allow spark to the coils if the engine is over heating so i order a $20 engine coolant temp sensor put it in clear the codes and start the truck.. charged the customer $30 for the part $40 labor and hes a customer for lfe and now understands that the rules are different for todays cars.

This is why diagnostics are so important these days, for the technician and the customer. Amateurs throw money at a problem instead of trying to understand the problem.

re: Camaro owner catches mechanics at dealership abusing his car(Posted by redstick13 on 10/10/12 at 12:31 am to Slinger16)

I may take diagnostics for granted. I spent years as a tech support for an entire continent. It was tech support for some extremely advanced technology. The modern auto electronics still control the basic functions of the engine. I honestly don't find it all that hard to figure out.

re: Camaro owner catches mechanics at dealership abusing his car(Posted by BTHog on 10/10/12 at 12:36 am to Slinger16)

Yep the tow bill cst hom more than my repair bill.

Was a total new one for us. Never seen a temp sensor keep one from starting.

Tell.you another one. Last summer a kid came in with a ford windstar no a/c no speedometer. Local ford dealership lcharged him $100 to diagnose it as an electrical issue.

So we start researching and tracing and nareow it down to which fuse effects both ghe ac and the speedometer. Sure enough the fuse is blown we replace the fuse ac and speedo work. Drive a mile down the road fuse blows.

Bring it back disconnect the ac replace fuse drive it speedo works but the fuse blows after a mile or so.

So bring it back. Put another fuse in it. Disconnect the speedo and reconnect the ac . Drive it down the road ac works until the fuse blows.

Dammit okay bring it back replace fuse unplug ac drive down the road bring back fuse is blown again with neither ac nor speedi hooked up.

Do a little more research on identifix and find a guy who says to pull fuse panel and cut the red wire going to that fuse put it back togethet. Put a fuse in it and it will be fixed. Everything will work.

Well whata the red wire do? Apparently nothing on that vehicle bc the repair worked. Charged the customer $150 instead of the $500 ford wanted.

re: Camaro owner catches mechanics at dealership abusing his car(Posted by Slinger16 on 10/10/12 at 12:37 am to redstick13)

quote: I honestly don't find it all that hard to figure out.

It really isn't if you spend some time to look at what is going on and do some troubleshooting. Where a good scan tool comes in is it gives you a lot more troubleshooting options. You can use it to look at all kinds of data and manipulate some vehicle functions that the average person can't.

Look at the new Ford EcoBoost engines... those things have more sensors on them than the Curiosity Rover

re: Camaro owner catches mechanics at dealership abusing his car(Posted by redstick13 on 10/10/12 at 12:56 am to Slinger16)

I pulled the speedo sensor on my Jeep to replace it for a new gear ratio. The Jeep would die when I went from road speed to stopping at a junction, etc. I immediately figured the ECM was using the vehicle speed to idle the engine down. Not a single mechanic in our area could tell me that.

A few months later I had my ECM go out and it killed my battery. Same thing. I had a half dozen diagnosis for my problem, not a single one was the ECM.

re: Camaro owner catches mechanics at dealership abusing his car(Posted by redstick13 on 10/10/12 at 12:59 am to BTHog)

quote:If you dont find it complicated its because you dont really understand it.

I'm not saying it is complicated. I'm saying an engine needs 3 basic things to make it run. If you understand how modern engine sensors work it isn't all that complicated to figure out which component is not working. You just have to figure out what is making it shut off.

I had to trouble shoot a downhole drilling tool with 64 PCBs. An engine ECM issue isn't that complicated.

re: Camaro owner catches mechanics at dealership abusing his car(Posted by redstick13 on 10/10/12 at 1:04 am to Slinger16)

Developed a fault and stopped charging the battery. Check engine light came on permanently and that is what tipped me off. The dashboard lights that you see when you start the engine never went off. I manged to get two days out my Optima battery before it died off. I immediately knew what was going on. Replaced the ECM and no issue.

re: Camaro owner catches mechanics at dealership abusing his car(Posted by Napoleon on 10/10/12 at 2:22 am to BTHog)

yeah, I get Popular Mechanics and the last issue had a write up installing the unit in a garage. They don't take up that much space. I was shocked when I saw them at $2500.

I would like to look into doing some structural work on the garage. I have eight foot ceilings, but if I took out part of the attic I could probably get enough room to stand under a car, or at least crouch.